Hopeful Hearts at Glendale Hall

by Victoria Walters

  ‘I can’t wait for bed,’ he added in a lower voice, his lips brushing my hair as he spoke, sending a little shiver through me.

  And right then, neither could I.

  Chapter Four

  It was still dark as it always was this time of year when I got up. I woke up in bed alone, toasty warm, and not at all happy at the prospect of having to leave the comfortable bed. I closed my eyes briefly thinking back to last night, once we had gone to bed after the wedding. A wide smile came over my face. We often ended up falling straight to sleep after a long, hard day on the farm at this time of year so it had been a welcome change to feel Rory’s touch and urgent kisses. I had slept better than I had in a while too.

  I knew I couldn’t stay here replaying last night unfortunately. Not for the first time, I let myself imagine that I was about to pull on a blouse and high heels and go off to a heated workplace as I had done at the library, instead of needing to wear countless layers and brave the elements outside.

  A noise from Harry’s room across the landing from ours finally pulled me out from under the duvet. I slipped on my dressing gown and shuffled into my slippers and went into his room. He was half standing in his cot, yawning sleepily. ‘Mummy,’ he said when he saw me and gave me that cheeky little smile of his. The one that always reminded me of Rory.

  ‘Morning, love. What did you dream about last night then?’ I scooped him up and he flopped against me as if he was putting his whole trust in me to keep him safe. Which still freaked me out, if I was honest. I walked us over to the window and drew back the curtains, which was pointless as it was still dark outside and there was nothing to light up the view. ‘Shall we have a warm drink before we head outside? I think we’re going to need it,’ I said, brushing the hair back from his face.

  When Harry was first born, I couldn’t sleep. I kept a watch over his cot checking that he was still breathing. Perhaps it was something that all mothers did, I wasn’t sure. I was too embarrassed to ask Beth or Emily, and it made me miss my own mother even more who I could have talked to about anything. I managed to ease myself out of the habit at least, but my fear hadn’t really gone away.

  I was terrified of not only losing Rory or Harry, but of them losing me. Like I had lost my own mother.

  Holding Harry tightly, I carried him downstairs to the kitchen with me wishing that my mum could have known him. They had found her cancer far too late, and her demise had been far too quick. I had been helpless to stop it. And now I was unable to talk to her about everything I wanted to, to ask her questions I hadn’t even thought of asking while she was still here. Especially about motherhood.

  I thought back then to when I found out I was pregnant.

  * * *

  ‘Well, my stomach bug hasn’t come back.’ I walked out of the bathroom to where Rory was perched on the side of his bed, waiting. I held up the pregnancy test, feeling utter shock. A few weeks before I’d had a nasty tummy bug, which had clearly stopped the pill from working. I hadn’t felt properly well since, getting tired more and more, falling asleep in the evenings, and generally not feeling myself. Finally, I’d realised that my period was also late so I’d taken a test, certain it would be negative. I had been very, very wrong.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I asked, sitting down next to him numbly, the test falling into my lap. I loved Rory and I had always planned to be a mother one day. But we had hardly even been a couple for long, just four months. We weren’t ready for this. I wasn’t ready.

  Rory took my hands in his. ‘We are going to raise this baby together, that’s what we’re going to do, and you’re going to come and live with me here. I love you, Heth. I have for too long to even say.’

  ‘But it’s too soon.’ I felt a tear roll down my cheek. I felt sick… panicked… scared. I hadn’t planned on falling in love with Rory and now I suddenly was going to have his baby. ‘I can’t live on a farm,’ I said, as I dissolved into tears.

  He pulled me to him. ‘It’s going to be okay. Don’t think about the timing. Think about how you feel. Do you want this baby, Heth? I’d understand if…’

  I looked up. ‘Of course!’ I said automatically. I touched my stomach. This was part of us. ‘I’m just… terrified. And I want my mum to be honest.’ I needed her to tell me that I could do this because I just wasn’t sure.

  ‘I’m scared too but we love each other, we can do this together. I promise you.’

  And Rory held me close and made me believe that we could do this.

  * * *

  But there were still days, even now, when I questioned whether Rory had been right about that or not.

  After I’d had a coffee and Harry had had some warm milk, we pulled on thick layers and wellies and headed outside ready for the morning chores. I used to strap Harry to my back but now I let him walk with me because if I tried to put him in his pushchair, he just got cranky. Seeing him scampering around the farm did make me smile, especially in his tiny wellies.

  I was amazed that he was here even after all this time. I still felt a little lost as a mother. Maybe because I didn’t have my own mum to guide me through it all. I wondered if I could ever be the kind of mother to Harry that she had been to me.

  Sometimes, I felt like I was one step from losing my grip on it all. And I didn’t want to say those words aloud to anyone, even to Rory.

  It was why I held back from getting married and having another baby. What if I just couldn’t cope? What if I ended up abandoning them and running away? Or worse? I squeezed my eyes shut. What if something happened to me like what had happened to my mother? What if I got sick and left Rory and Harry? Perhaps I was holding back to try to protect them from ever having to lose me.

  ‘Chickens!’ Harry said enthusiastically, as we weaved our way around to the chicken coop with a bucket of water.

  ‘Chickens, that’s right,’ I told him. The chickens were free-range but in winter had to stay in the coop built by the side of the farmhouse, it was just too cold to be outside. ‘Want to scatter some feed?’ I bent down and poured some into Harry’s little outstretched hand. He threw it inexpertly on to the floor far from the chickens but he looked so thrilled. ‘Good job, they will love that,’ I told him, watching the chickens rushing to their food, pushing one another out of the way. I looked at their water trough. It had frozen again despite the ball we kept on it to try to prevent it. I cracked the ice with my hand and re-filled it. Sometimes in winter, tasks like this felt unrelenting – we had to do the same things over and over. At least the winter hadn’t gotten so cold yet that our electricity was affected, that was always hard for me to cope with. I was a townie after all.

  We left the chickens then and headed to feed our goats and pigs. I had only taken on my own responsibilities on the farm over the past two years. When I first moved in, I was pregnant and working full-time at the library so I really hadn’t been that involved. But then Rory opened the farm shop, and I had lots of ideas and wanted to help – I designed the logo and sign, I helped decide what would be stocked and to design the layout, and then I started to get involved with how the produce arrived in the shop from the farm, and other suppliers, too. Once I had Harry, I went part-time at the library and things got even busier at the farm so I stepped in to help. Then when I finally had to let my library job go, I found myself with plenty of my own responsibilities on the farm.

  The main work I did was for our farm shop though. Rory’s profits had been dwindling, the farm taking much of what he made from the cows, so when Beth had taken over the shops in Glendale, we had opened up a farm shop together in the High Street. We had a full-time manager, an older lady called Hattie who had lived in Glendale forever like us, and who the customers loved, but I visited the shop most days, and was always trying to come up with ideas for things we could sell. Rory took care of the meat, and we also sold milk and cheese, eggs of course, homemade chutneys and jams, and fresh vegetables and fruit grown on the farm. It wasn’t easy though, and Beth had reminded me that I
needed to do all I could to help keep our profits up. I had promised her a photo for social media.

  ‘Right, what would people like to see of our farm?’ I asked Harry, looking around. I watched as Angus let out the horses into the paddock before heading off to muck out the stables. Behind the paddock, the sun was just starting to rise, creating a pretty pastel light above the horses as they chewed on the grass. I quickly pulled out my phone from my pocket, and snapped a photo of it. It really was a beautiful scene and I stood for a moment to drink it in, grateful I could see it even if it had meant being up so early and out in such cold weather. A reminder that it could be beautiful out here. Something I forgot too often.

  ‘Hungry,’ Harry said from beside me, leaning against the fence with a sigh.

  ‘Come on then, let’s have some breakfast. I think we’ve done everything anyway,’ I said, sending the photo to Beth and taking Harry’s hand in mine. We set off back to the farmhouse for breakfast. I looked up to the hill fields and could see Rory making his way back down. He lifted his hand in a wave, and I waved back. It was nice that we lived and worked in the same place even if we didn’t get to spend enough of that time together.

  ‘Morning, Dad,’ I said when we went into the kitchen through the back door. Dad was at the table with a cup of tea. ‘It’s freezing out there,’ I told him as I removed our coats and boots.

  ‘Had a good morning, Harry?’ Dad asked, helping him into his highchair. ‘Did you feed the chickens?’

  ‘Chickens,’ Harry agreed. ‘Milk,’ he added.

  ‘Say please,’ I reminded him, but when he said it, it came out sounding more like ‘peas’.

  Dad chuckled. ‘Here we go,’ he said, pouring some into his beaker.

  ‘Right, let’s get some food on,’ I said, going to the fridge. Something brushed my legs. ‘You hungry too, Tabby?’ I asked the cat, who was meant to be the farm mouser but was too lazy to do a good job.

  ‘Morning everyone,’ Rory said cheerfully then, coming through the back door. Being outdoors always put him in a good mood even on a morning like this. He came over to give me a kiss then mussed Harry’s hair as he joined him and Dad at the table, grabbing himself a coffee and pouring one out for me too.

  I made scrambled eggs and toast for us all, joining them at the table with two big platefuls. I had eaten the best I ever had in my life moving out here. The eggs and milk were from the farm, the bread fresh from Emily’s bakery, and it all tasted so much the better for being homegrown and homemade. We all tucked in eagerly.

  I looked fondly at Harry. He loved his food. All the fresh air outside made us good eaters, and all our cheeks were rosy from the brisk weather. I hadn’t had a cold in two years, and I was sure Harry would grow up just as resilient as his father, who was never ill. He would have a very different childhood to mine growing up in a three-bed semi-detached in the village, that was for sure. ‘I need to head to the shop after breakfast and drop off some produce,’ I said then.

  ‘I need to sort things out before the auction next week, and repair that fence before the snow comes in,’ Rory said with a grimace. There was always so much to do. Often Rory and I were apart for most of the day, doing all the separate things that needed doing, which was a shame, but at least we had the evenings as a family.

  ‘Will you be okay here for a bit by yourself?’ I checked with dad.

  ‘Of course. I can take Harry though, if you like?’

  ‘It’s fine, he’ll enjoy the trip out,’ I said. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust my dad to look after Harry, of course I did, but I just didn’t like not being at the farm with him, keeping an eye on him.

  ‘Oh, Drew invited us all to dinner by the way,’ Rory added then.

  Relief washed over me. We often had dinner at Glendale Hall, and it meant I didn’t have to worry about cooking later. ‘Great,’ I said. The day sounded like a manageable one for once. ‘Right, I’ll go and have my shower then,’ I said, draining my cup of coffee dry, hoping it would give me the burst of energy I needed. Rory teased me for putting on make-up out here and washing my hair every day but that was me, and I didn’t want to change what I had always done.

  I glanced out of the window and my heart sank when I realised it had started sleeting. ‘I hope that doesn’t turn into snow.’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ Rory said as he picked up Harry. ‘You worry too much.’

  I glanced at him bouncing our son on his knee and sighed a little. The problem was I did all the worrying for all of us whereas Rory didn’t seem to ever really worry about anything.

  * * *

  Glendale always looked its best in the run up to Christmas. The High Street had a large Christmas tree right in the centre brightly lit up, there were fairy lights strung along either side of the road between the lampposts, and each of the shops were brightly decorated inside too. Even though I wasn’t a fan, I had to admit that the sleet added to the festive feel of the village when I parked outside the Fraser Farm Shop. So much so, I jumped out and snapped a photo and sent that to Beth as well, hoping it might encourage a couple more customers to think of us when it came to their Christmas shopping.

  ‘Right, let’s bring the food in, shall we?’ I said brightly to Harry when I went around to his side of the car. I pulled the hood of his coat up and put him in his pushchair as I wanted to get in and out of the shop quickly and letting him walk would not be conducive to that. Opening the boot, I pulled out the pots of chutneys and jams that we paid a local woman to make for us, and balanced the box on the pushchair, walking into the shop, glad to be in the warmth once I was through the door.

  The shop was a small square space with a fresh food counter along one side where we sold beef and pork products as well as cheese and there was a fridge of goats’ milk next to it; then there was a table in the middle with eggs, fresh veg and fruit, although there wasn’t much at this time of the year, and the chutneys and jams. Then the other side of the shop had the till counter and the mugs and tea towels we had made with the farm logo I had designed printed on.

  ‘Morning!’ I said to Hattie, our manager, my heart sinking at seeing the shop empty. There weren’t many people at this time of year about the village who didn’t live here; the tourists only really came in the summer although there were a few more in winter now that the Glendale Hall festive trail was becoming more well known, but business was a generally lot slower in the colder months. ‘Got a delivery for you! I’ll pop it out the back, I’ll just park Harry here a sec.’

  I left the pushchair by the counter and carried the box of new produce out the back. When I returned, Hattie was talking to him.

  ‘He’s a bonnie lad,’ she said when she saw me. She was about sixty-five and had actually retired from her lifelong teaching career, where she had worked with my mum, who had been a history teacher, but she had become bored at home so had been eager to come and work for us when the shop opened. We had a school-aged boy help her out on the weekends. During the summer, I also helped out but in December, she was capable on her own in here on a weekday. ‘His eyes are just like your mother’s. She would have doted on him, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘She would have,’ I agreed, feeling wistful that she would never know how he was a mix of our families.

  ‘And that Fraser hair,’ she continued. I smiled, Hattie said the same thing pretty much every time I brought Harry in, bless her. ‘Reminds me so much of his father when he was his age. He’ll love growing up on that farm like Rory. Rory was almost feral running around that farm as a boy. Always struck me as a pretty great life for a kid.’

  ‘He already wants to be out there with me as much as he can,’ I said, trying not to think about him growing up and taking over the farm. It was a calling that was still hard for me to understand; Rory said the farm pumped through his veins like blood throughout his childhood, and I knew he wanted Harry to feel the same way. ‘So, how’s it been here this week?’ I asked, a little reluctantly. Sometimes I didn’t always want to hear the answer
to my questions.

  ‘Not too busy, but I think it’ll pick up the closer we get to Christmas,’ she replied – like Rory she was ever the optimist.

  ‘Beth thinks I should do more promotion on social media to help.’

  ‘Oh, you should. I’m on Twitter and Instagram now.’

  ‘You are?’ I stared at her, unable to contain my surprise.

  ‘I have to keep up with all my friends and family. It’s how I found out about the suits in the village.’

  ‘Suits?’ I asked, still taken aback at the thought of Hattie tweeting.

  ‘Aye, two men in suits sniffing around the village. From Edinburgh, apparently, in a rather flash car, snooping around the village. Asking a lot of questions too apparently about the place. I’d warn Beth if I were you.’

  Beth had already saved the village from a development company, she would be furious if someone else wanted to tear down the place. ‘I’ll give her a heads up, for sure. I wonder what they’re doing here. We really don’t need any more problems to deal with.’

  ‘More problems?’ she asked, sharply, looking at me.

  ‘With the village,’ I said, quickly. Hattie was lovely but definitely a gossip, I didn’t want to let on that I was struggling with anything.

  ‘Aye, we don’t need anyone slowing the progress we’ve made reviving the place. It’s getting back to how it was when I was just married, and I walked to the village every day for the bits I needed.’

  ‘Let’s hope we won’t have a bad winter to put people off,’ I said, biting my lip. I knew from last year that even though the community had rallied round to support the High Street shops when Beth re-opened them, a heavy snowfall kept people at home more.

  ‘I’m sorry to say but I can feel a sharp front coming in. There will be snow up on your hills soon, make no mistake. Tell Rory from me.’ When you lived in Glendale as long as Hattie had, you didn’t even bother to watch a weather forecast.